Virtual Eye News

Virtual Eye's Chris Carpenter sets up one of two 360VR cameras used on Emirates Team NZ and Oracle Team USA.

The 360VR tower positioned just ahead of the main communications tower aboard the AC50 - Richard Gladwell www.photosport.co.nz

An image from eight cameras is stitched together to form the on-board viewing experience.

A low resolution screen shot from the Samsung Gear headset on the platform of the AC50.

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Richard Gladwell from Sail-World NZ met Virtual Eye CEO Ian Taylor aboard the ferry back to Hamilton, Bermuda at the end of a day's America's Cup racing. Putting on the Samsung Gear headset Ian was carrying, Richard watched a 3D Video clip of Emirates Team New Zealand's Louis Vuitton Semi-Final race against Land Rover BAR. The application is the latest development from Virtual Eye, whose tracking and 3D graphics for broadcast TV has been extended into a multitude of platforms and devices from mobile phones to PC's and smart TV's.

It provides a stunning 360 view of what it is like to sail aboard an AC50, sitting in the centre of the wingsailed catamaran close to the aft crossbeam. The 360VR camera pack consists of eight GoPro's - with one looking up, two looking down and five covering a 360degree horizontal radius - and was 3D printed at Virtual Eye's Dunedin offices. Read the full story at www.sail-world.com

Mid-May saw Virtual Eye Sailing in Scarlino Italy, covering the Rolex TP52 World Championship Scarlino 2017. Meanwhile, Virtual Eye Golf set up shop in the U.K., supplying graphics and tracking at the BMW PGA Championships at Wentworth Club. The America's Cup Qualifiers and Challenger Playoffs began in Bermuda on the 27th, and Virtual Eye is there for the duration of the 35th America's Cup.

Virtual Eye is also aiming to put you on-board an America's Cup boat. Recently, Radio New Zealand interviewed Virtual Eye CEO Ian Taylor, who described some of the challenges the company faced. "In Bermuda we're doing all the stuff that you'd normally expect, the tracking, the computer graphics, the mobile app... but the thing that's got us all excited is the potential for 360 VR. Imagine it, being on the back of one of those things flying at close to 50 knots, with another one chasing you... unbelievable. So we've had to build our own multi-camera rigs to go on the boats, get permission from the America's Cup people to put them on the boats, and there's so much data coming off the boats that we've had to design a whole logistical system as well."

Virtual Eye Systems Manager, John Jenkins, adds: "As a race starts a crew member pushes a button to start all the cameras simultaneously , they record for the duration of their battery life. When the race is finished we grab the unit off the boat, download the data from the cards and process it with our own software. We're hoping to have finished 360 video available within a 3 hour timeframe. There are rigs around that you can do this with, but we're hoping to get better quality stitching and a lot more definition in the video. We've built 2 units for the America's Cup... on the lead-up races we'll be testing the units, the America's Cup people will decide which boats they go on ultimately."

Above: A 360 degree video test, early on in the development cycle - onboard an AC45F with Oracle Team USA during the LVACWS event in Chicago 2016. (Watch on YouTube)